


Soft like Water

by MooseFeels



Series: Turn Me On [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, miscarriage aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 05:10:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It hurts so much, telling Dean to leave. It hurts like nothing else Castiel has ever had to do. It hurts almost as much as losing her.

Dean kisses him and he walks out, and then Castiel cries for the first time.

He couldn’t cry in front of Dean. He couldn’t cry in front of anyone. He couldn’t.

And now he’s alone and the only thing he can do now is cry, cry, cry, because he killed their child. He keeps crying, and the sound and feeling of it soon begins to tear out of him, like something being ripped out. Like that something special and bright has been torn out of him, and now he’s falling, falling, falling. Like he’s fallen, and he’s hit the ground.

He howls. He screams.

No one disturbs him, until he stops screaming and he’s just crying. He’s just sobbing.

It the short nurse who’s been in and out for the past few days. Blonde hair, brown eyes. Short. Authoritative.

He comes into the room and he sits down on the bed and he holds Castiel, and Castiel starts screaming again, and he can’t stop until his voice gives up.

It’s hours.

The nurse holds him for a long time, until Castiel stops screaming voicelessly and he pulls away. He says, “Okay. Got a friend who’s a park ranger and I’ve got access to a ski cabin. You need a place to live. Fifty dollars rent every two weeks, to me. I’ve got a cousin with a yarn store on main, he can set you up with a job. ”

Castiel nods.

“Okay,” the nurse says. “Now we’re going to get you out of bed and dressed and to the ski cabin, okay? Okay.”

“Okay,” Castiel croaks.

“I’m Gabriel,” the nurse says. “Think of me as a guardian angel.”

Castiel looks at him skeptically, and then he flips him off.

Gabriel smiles wryly. “Alright, sunlight, let’s get you ready to check out.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel is sore. He feels like he’s run a marathon, and he still feels both tension and emptiness in his abdominal muscles.  His clothes don’t fit him right- too tight in some places, too loose in others. He feels misshapen.

He doesn’t want anyone to look at him as he’s wheeled out of the hospital to Gabriel’s beaten up Honda. Gabriel helps him in, still in his scrubs and a light jacket.

“Can you drive?” He asks.

Castiel shakes his head.

“Alright,” he says. “Well, first thing tomorrow, I’m teaching you how.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything. He certainly doesn’t say that he doesn’t want to drive, he doesn’t want to leave the hospital, he doesn’t want to get out of bed, he doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to move ever again. He just wants to be left alone in a cool, dark place, and never be seen again.

The ski cabin is small, but it’s bigger than the apartment he was living in the day before. It’s furnished in heavy wood and thick quilts. Gabriel tells him the fridge is full.

He lets Castiel in and hands him a legal pad. “I want you to make a list,” he says, “of six things you’d like to do by the end of the month. Learn to tapdance, re-enact that scene from Ghost, go streaking, smoke pot, sleep with a woman, dance with the devil in the pale moonlight- whatever. Make a list. My limits are federal crime and opiates. Also cocaine.”

Castiel takes the legal pad and looks at it dumbly.

“I’m picking you up tomorrow at nine,” Gabriel says. “Be ready.”

And then he pulls out of the gravel drive and is off.

Castiel is alone in the house.

He shuts the front door and he sits down on the overstuffed couch.

He sits there for a long time.

He stares at the legal pad, empty.

Castiel sighs at it and he gets up from the couch to find the bathroom.

The bathroom is tiny- an ancient porcelain toilet and an old porcelain sink and a tiny, filthy bathtub with a rusty shower head suspended about four feet over the tub.

Castiel looks at it, skeptical.

He shakes his head and finds the bedroom.

He lays down and sleeps until Gabriel physically shakes him awake.

“Alright, bright eyes, let’s go,” Gabriel says. “Come on, let’s go. Wake up.”

“No,” Castiel murmurs from the warm place under the blankets.

Gabriel jerks the blankets backward and says, “Nope, come on. That’s not that day. Up and at ‘em, starlight.”

Castiel glares at him. “I don’t want to.”

Gabriel nods. “Yeah, I know. Come on, I’ve got a cousin you need to meet. You’ll be late for your appointment.”

Castiel groans.

Gabriel prods at him until he gets out of bed.

Castiel sits up and he lets Gabriel push him out the door and back into the front seat of the car.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel empitily agrees to be at the messy store on Monday, at eight in the morning. He pokes absently at his food. He shrugs noncommittally at Gabriel's endless conversation. 

 

Gabriel drops him back off at the cabin, and he says, "I've signed you up for a Thai cooking class. I'll be here at nine."

 

Castiel sighs. Shrugs. 

 

The Thai cooking course isn't actually taught by anyone Thai. It's actually taught by a slim woman with red hair, named Anna. 

 

It's hypnotic to watch her work. She is confident and capable, her hands sure as she peels shrimp and chops vegetables and mixes. She has a calming voice, like a sea.

 

Castiel goes through the motions of cooking, but he can of bring himself to eat what he's made by the end- some sort of cold pork dish in lettuce leaves. 

 

He doesn't really want to eat anything, actually. He's picked at diner pancakes and he's nibbled at candy that Gabriel has given him. He hasn't really wanted anything at all. 

 

Anything. 

 

The class finishes and Anna approaches him. Sits down on the tall stool next to him and says, "Gabriel's a good guy. You should trust him."

 

"I don't want to learn the art of Thai cooking," Castiel admits.

 

"Yes, I've gathered," she answers. "He's pushed you in here because you don't have an alternative."

 

"I want to lay in bed forever," Castiel says. "Or shower forever."

 

"Those aren't valid alternatives," Anna says. 

 

"I'm in mourning," Castiel spits. "Or course they are."

 

Anna sighs. She's probably noticed that, actually, if Gabriel hasn't told her. Castiel's shape is still strange- a little too round in his torso and chest and nowhere else. 

 

"You're not the only one who's ever lost a baby," she says. 

 

Castiel looks at her. She's maybe two or three years older than him. She's got a wedding band one hand and another ring in the opposite hand. Plain steel band. Something engraved on it. A name. 

 

"Grief is a river," she says. "It sources and it flows through all things. It has a life cycle- a flood and an ebb. It never dries, but it re-routes. It won't always be the strongest force in your life. It'll be just a creek, one day. You have to let it dry, though. You have to move on."

 

"I don't want to," Castiel says. "I wanted a family." He's angry, he suddenly realizes. He's furious. "I never wanted this. I never wanted- I wanted a family with a little girl and a tire swing. I wanted to cook for her and wipe her tears and hate her boyfriends. I wanted to be her papa and I wanted her to feel safe and loved like I never did. And I robbed me." He's shouting now. "My own body robbed me. My own body told me I wasn't good enough. I just wanted to be good enough. I just wanted to have a family. I just wanted to be happy."

 

"You can still be happy," Gabriel says, from the doorway. 

 

"How?" Castiel screams at him, like an animal.

 

The word rings in the demonstration space like a howl. 

 

Gabriel hands him a legal pad, and walks away.


	4. Chapter 4

Castiel stares at the legal pad for hours and hours and hours, and finally he throws it at a wall and walks away from it.

He’s awake for when Gabriel comes the next morning. He has clothes on. He still has not showered since he came back from the hospital.

He climbs into the car and Gabriel wrinkles his nose. “Dude,” he says, “what the hell?”

“The shower is short,” Castiel says. “Like, you short.”

Gabriel laughs. “Built for simpler times,” he says. “You wanna do something about it?”

Castiel looks out at the road.

“Only if you let me sit in it for hours and hours while I listen to Bob Dylan records as loud as I can,” he answers.

“You fix it, you wallow in it,” Gabriel says.

They stop at a hardware store on the way back from breakfast and they look through hardware. Castiel picks something that looks like richly oiled bronze- reddish and beautiful and old. He grabs a head and a pipe set and the necessary tools. Gabriel pays for it.

They drive back to the ski cabin and Castiel climbs out of the car and heads back to the bathroom. He sits on the floor as he opens all of the requisite packaging and reads all of the information included, and then he sets out to find the water main.

He shuts it off and then he drains the pipes by turning on all the faucets in the house. Rusty water flows from the shower head, and Castiel frowns at it.

He loosens the old fixtures from the tub and then wraps the connection in teflon tape and he screws on the new ones. He positions the head, which will stand far above him at six feet five inches in the air, and he checks the seals.

He turns the water main back on, and the shower comes to life.

He ignores the dirt in the bottom of the tub and he promptly climbs into it.

He starts with the water as cold as he can stand it, so cold it makes every nerve in his body scream and his hair stand straight up. He slowly inches it warmer and warmer and warmer and hotter and hotter and hotter until he’s been in the shower for the past two hours and it’s so hot all of the blood in his body is right at his skin and his tears are frigid on his cheeks.

Castiel stays in the shower until the water runs ice cold again, and then he climbs out.

He lays down on his bed, goosebumps forming tight on his skin, still soaking wet. He stays there until he dries, and then he climbs up and gets dressed at looks at the legal pad some more.

He writes on it “fix shower.’

He looks at it and nods.

He shrugs into a light button down shirt and he walks outside, into the woods.

It is live with the electric sound of the woods in summer. Insects and birds and the low ground rustle of hedgehogs and god knows what else. Castiel walks down the track and he looks at the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds and the brown of the bark and dirt and the green of the leaves and the grass and the bushes.

He keeps walking and he sees a rabbit in the underbrush. Brown fur. Brown eyes. Big ears.

It dashes out from the bushes suddenly, and a fox follows it just as fast. There is a brief chase, and there is the sudden choking sound of death.

The fox looks at Castiel, and Castiel cocks his head slowly to the left.

The fox blinks, and it runs off, the rabbit’s feet loose and bouncing in its jaws.

Castiel stands there for a long time, looking at the place where the rabbit died. He runs his hands over his empty stomach. Wipes his nose.

He turns around and walks back to the cabin and sleeps soundly that night.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Gabriel comes by the next morning, and Castiel makes breakfast for him.

There’s a loaf of bread that’s been going stale in the breadbox, and there are some eggs and little milk, so he throws together some french toasts and makes a syrup from blackberries he ran into on his walk. It’s not bad- it’s not his best, and he still doesn’t really want to eat, but he’s started shaking, so he has a slice.

Gabriel has his with too much syrup and he groans happily at the taste. “Cassie,” he says. “My god.”

Castiel smiles weakly. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ve always liked cooking.”

Gabriel nods. “But not Thai cooking?”

He blushes. “I’m sorry I was rude to Anna,” he says.

Gabriel shrugs. “She’s not upset. Not really. She’s a good woman. Her wife’s a good woman, too. Shame her ex is such a sack of shit.”

Castiel raises an eyebrow.

“Left her after the baby died,” he explains. “She met Jo at a bar. Unusual couple. Omegas, the both of them.”

Castiel nods.

They sit quietly in the kitchen for a few more minutes, and then Castiel says, “I want to start baking.”

Gabriel nods. “Well, if it’s anything like this, I think you’d go pretty far.”

Castiel smiles at him a little.

“Would you like to bake today?” Gabriel asks.

Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t want to do anything,” he says. “I want to sleep and I want to be alone. I feel- I feel so empty.”

Gabriel nods. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s...that’s to be expected. What you went through, it happens a lot more than anyone likes to say. Miscarriage is...ugly. There’s a really scary number of omegas who are unattached because of this.”

Castiel looks at the counter for a long time. “I was the one who wanted the time apart,” he says.

Gabriel looks at him, surprised. “You’re not like other guys,” he says.

Castiel shrugs.

Gabriel runs his finger around his plate, picking up that last bit of syrup. “Tell you what- you come to the grocery store with me to get ingredients for baking later, you can be miserable all the rest of the day and tomorrow.”

Castiel smiles at him slightly. “You really like the schedule, don’t you?” he asks.

Gabriel grins. “I thrive on structure, what can I say. Go get dressed, we have to find you turbinado sugar.”

Castiel shrugs into a jacket, and they head to the store.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Castiel lays in bed and he thinks about all of the things he's lost. 

 

He thinks about his father, who died at thirty two. He thinks about his worn but kind face, his gentle brown eyes, his soothing voice. His incredible bedtime stories. He thinks about the way he made Castiel feel important and cherished. He thinks about falling asleep next to him in the twin bed. He thinks about how his father wept for his son when his heat came, not a rut. Not an alpha. Trapped in the net of culture that would push him down or push him away or push him into bad places. He thinks about the night his father died. An industrial accident. 

 

Castiel thinks about how much he would have loved his daughter. 

 

He thinks about Uriel leaving him for all the children he couldn't give him, and he thinks about being alone and afraid. About how hard it was to find anyone who would take him in while he got a job. About independence on terrifying terms, ones that were not his own. 

 

He thinks about how his body still hurts from life that it ripped from itself. 

 

He thinks about Dean, holding him and telling him he'd never leave. And how Castiel pushed him away. How Dean must mourn- bar room brawls and screaming and howling and fighting and running. How he has probably already found beautiful omegas to warm his bed while he cries into their necks. How he threw Dean away when he probably needed Castiel most.

 

He thinks about the phantom shape of his daughter in his dreams. 

 

He cries until the ocean inside of him drains, and grief is only a river, not a sea. 


End file.
